Abstract

Recent research has suggested that using a foreign language to
present hypothetical moral dilemmas increases the rate of utilitarian judgments
about those dilemmas (e.g., Greene et al, 2001) and decreases incoherency between
judgments in framing effect tasks (e.g., Costa, Foucart, Hayakawa, Aparici,
Apesteguia, Heafner, & Keysar, 2014; Keysar, Hayakawa, & An, 2012). However,
existing research has mainly investigated this effect using between-participants
designs (i.e., different participants in the foreign and native language
conditions). Such designs are unable to exclude non-equivalent conditions as a
confounding variable. In contrast, this study examined the foreign language
effect using a within-subjects design (i.e., all participants responded to moral
dilemmas (Greene et al, 2001) and framing effect tasks in both their native and
foreign languages. The “foreign language effect” was replicated,
excluding semantic non-equivalence between language conditions as a potential
confound. This result supports the hypothesis that the foreign language effect is
independent of meaning.